


Where you and I shall go

by Lilliburlero



Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, James Harris | The Demon Lover (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: Child Death, Drowning, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Revenants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:45:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the True History of the House-Carpenter's Wife and her Daemon Lover, Never Before Imprint'd.</p><p>*</p><p>Note: non-graphic mentions of drowning, death of a child, period-typical sexism and sectarianism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where you and I shall go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> #4 in a series of fics inspired by lines of poetry obtained using a sort-of _sortes Virgilianae_ method. 
> 
> havisham drew 'When Hell sucks in the foaming turbulence of torrents' from Níkos Gátsos' poem 'Amergos', and prompted for 'any ballad'.

When Captain Harris and his son both went to sea, Mrs Reynolds, his housekeeper, was relieved. Her daughter Jane noticed, and tried not to resent her for it. She recognised the sacrifices her widowed mother had made to keep her fed and clothed, to ensure that she learned fine as well as everyday work, and her letters. Mrs Reynolds had refused situations that would part them, saying it was no betterment if Jane had to go, at best, to live with relations who were all but strangers. At last she found an employer who would take Jane too. Captain Harris (who to a nine-year-old had seemed very tall and imposing, though before Jane was fully grown she could look him in the eye without tilting up her head) said that if the day came when could not accommodate such a slip of a creature he should forfeit the name of an officer, a gentleman and a Christian. Anyway, she could help in the nursery, and attend Mrs Harris on her maid’s half-day. 

Jane had no gift for the duties of a lady’s maid, but she was a born nurse. She doted upon Charlotte and Sophy, plump, fair babies, but James was sun and moon to her, all the airts and the Pole Star. She was the wild beasts to his intrepid explorer, wicked magician and captive princess to his gallant knight errant, pirates and slavers to his bold admiral. She sat with her work in the schoolroom, absorbing enough Latin and navigational mathematics to make her mother concerned for her marriage prospects, while Captain Harris fretted that an excess of female society would turn his son into a milksop. 

James had been entered on a ship’s books aged seven; his father considered that this convenient fiction should become a reality before his thirteenth birthday. The Captain had strong views on the sort of young gentleman who joined his first ship at seventeen and was as a consequence seasick, anxious, and morbidly prone to involvement in affairs of honour. Mrs Harris, whose sense of decorum was calibrated like a marine chronometer, wept placidly for half a morning, then busied herself with the necessary preparations for husband and son. Captain Harris stalked the passages of the house, impatiently exhorting his family and the servants to lose not a minute. The twins were too young to understand exactly what went on. Only Jane was _really_ upset, distraught with the passionate indignation of her fifteen years. 

On the night before his departure, James said to her, with the blithe poise that comes of being brought up in a household of women, and which made him seem both much older and much younger than his age, ‘When I come back, I shall be a man with my own command, and you’ll marry me, won’t you, my Janet?’ 

Jane hoped her embarrassment did not show. A few months ago it would have been the most innocent of sport, but his voice had very lately started to creak and his shoulders to fill out, though he still only reached her chin.

‘I hope I shall see you again before you are a grown man quite, my dear,’ she said lightly. ‘I understand midshipmen in His Majesty’s Navy are given leave to visit their friends on occasion.’ 

‘But if you don’t,’ he insisted. 

‘I can’t believe your father will approve the match,’ she said with a laugh. ‘He'll settle for no less than a king's daughter, or a king's daughter's settlement, anyway.’ 

‘He won’t have to approve.’ James’s eyes grew hard as jet. The lowering schoolroom fire leapt in them. Then they softened into a merry, mischievous smile. ‘Do say yes.’ 

She kissed his forehead and stroked his hair. ‘As you wish. But you're a very silly boy. When you’ve seen a bit of the world you’ll come home begging to be released from the engagement.’ 

‘But you’ll be true to me,’ he said with unsettling simplicity. He stood on tiptoe and kissed her lips, then, in sudden confusion, looked at his shoes and fled. 

Captain Harris returned. But James did not. His ship left port on a routine patrol, foundered in a gale and was lost with all hands. 

Mrs Harris’s tears were not, this time, moderate and decorous. But in time she recovered her composure, though with spirits much reduced. It was the Captain who died of grief: a year and a day after his son was drowned, his steward found him in his cot, stone dead of a paralytic stroke. His widow took her daughters to live with her brother. With the small bequest left her, Mrs Reynolds established herself as a haberdasher; Jane listlessly kept house and helped in the shop. For almost three years, she hardly knew what she did from day to day. All joy and consolation had departed her, and yet she did not decline in health or strength. She had no hope, only a curious sense of expectation. Tall and pale, her grave demeanour made her seem more unusual and fascinating than she truly was. 

Certainly she captivated Thomas Joyner, a master carpenter whose work was, unusually for this port city, not dependent on the shipyards, but mainly in private houses. His industry was making him prosperous; his kindly good humour drew Jane out of herself. There were better-looking men alive, but that was no sound reason to refuse him. On her wedding night Jane found that the gentle diffidence with which he had conducted his courtship concealed an earthy appetite for conjugal pleasure, hers as much or more than his. It took a year of vigorous practice to get her with child, but at last she was brought to bed of a son, who thrived. This, she supposed, looking at the bonny bundle in the cradle, was good fortune, happiness, all for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But she felt as if she were still waiting for something to happen. Perhaps in a year or two—though she loved babies, she got on better with children who could walk and talk and play, remembering with a dull pang of guilt that she had not thought of James for many weeks—was it months? If she were a papist she could have said a prayer for his soul; as it was, she must trust simply that it was in bliss. She resigned little Tommy to his nurse and descended to the parlour. 

She had been at her work for about half an hour when the housemaid came in, blushing and settling her cap. She announced a Mr Harris, adding that she _had_ said the mistress wasn’t at home, but the gentleman said he hadn’t a moment to lose— 

Jane shivered at the conjunction of the name and the maritime refrain of her childhood, but neither were uncommon, nothing much out of the ordinary— 

But this young man was out of the ordinary. The crisp black curls of his head shone where the light struck them, as slick, washed-up timbers shine in the sun. His narrow, handsome face was white as holystone, and very strange his unweathered skin looked above the lieutenant’s uniform. He wore a heavy gilt epaulette on his left shoulder: master and commander. 

He made a leg. Jane heard a groan like an unsecured floorboard. But Tom Joyner's house had no loose floorboards in it. 

‘Well met, well met.’ 

His voice sang and sighed as a ship’s rigging does, loveliest and and most satisfying of music to those who know it. 

Jane extended her hand. It held quite steady. She was not astonished, she realised, for she had never truly believed him dead. He took it, drawing her from the low chair into his arms. She felt the conscious restraint of a strength more than human in the smooth movement, and his hand was icy through the glove he still wore. 

‘My own true love.’ 

He kissed her. His lips were as cold as his hand. Her nose and mouth flooded with brine. She did not choke, but swallowed it like a draught of Rhenish. 

‘Come. We have not a moment’s time.’ 

She opened her lips to protest _but my husband, my child_ and he sealed them again with a cold, salt kiss. She understood then the nature of the promise she had made, that had kept her restlessly waiting these seven years, and gave herself up to the unplumbable, implacable depths of the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> I've cherry-picked details from various versions of the ballad (Child 243) and made up some of my own. The fic title is from the ballad (version F).


End file.
